-- (22) NOLITE te BASTARDES CARBORUNDORUM

            

                                             Mobile

She watches the mobile wobble and sway, the miniature lion and monkey and zebra nodding at her, wearing plush smirks, insinuating triumph and conquest. 

On occasion, inertia will buckle and she’ll hear them bray or cackle, though she never tells a soul.

Through the wooden bars of the crib the baby’s chubby limbs kick, prodding for attention, helpless and so adorable that at times it can be both threatening and sickening.

Friends say the baby looks like him, though to her it’s just a cabbage head attached to a torso, a strain to sit with and coax through the squalling periods.

It’s almost feeding time.  Dusk pressing through the window like gray linen.  Air frigid and stale. 

Needing more darkness, she straps an eye mask on, thinking again about the boy named Denny, how he’d spoke of backpacking Europe together, then law school for both of them after. 

Denny the dreamer, whose face fades more with every week and month.

Now the baby thrashes and squawks, or maybe it’s the stuffed animals again. 

Blinded, she reaches out and grips the wooden crib bars in both hands, squeezing with a strange urgency until she can feel the paint melting in her sweaty palms, until the door cracks open, her husband saying, “Oh Honey, headache again?”